Mr Cameron, what are you saying about the canadian tar sands???

[AuroraGlacialis]

Check out this podcast containing Cameron and a scene from Avatar at 4:52: We are the insurgents at subMedia (http://submedia.tv/stimulator/2010/10/04/we-are-the-insurgents/)

It features a statement of Mr Cameron after his visits to the ongoing annihilation of the Canadian landscape in search for more oil. For those who dont know it, Canada holds some of the largest oil reserves on this planet. Bad thing though that that oil is in the shape of tar sands which have to be dug out in humongous mining operations dwarfing the Unobtanium mines of Pandora and the refining process poisons the rivers and lands of the Cree indians (you may remember them for saying "Only When the Last Tree Has Died and the Last River Been Poisoned and the Last Fish Been Caught Will We Realise We Cannot Eat Money").

Mr Cameron then actually talks about how this oil is a valuable resource in the energy starved future can serve North America to become independent from OPEC oil imports. So what is he saying, that it is better to crap in the own backyard than in someone elses? crap is still crap and Tar Sands mining is about the biggest crap around in terms of hydrocarbon mining: http://www.avatar-forums.com/images/imported/2010/10/70.jpg

Please, someone tell me that he had some goooood reason to say this - but it better be a really, really good explanation!!!

[ZenithLord_42]

My take on Mr. Cameron's words is that it would be better for everyone that groups like OPEC didn't have a monopoly on oil especially now. It would be better, but the extraction of the oil would definately lead to scars lasting for centuries. Also, oil is too much of a "cash-cow" for anyone to want to fund research into alternative energy. I'm not talking about windmills or solar power, I'm talking about better hydrogen fuel cells and maybe even the reality of fusion and anti-matter reactors in the near future. It is entirely possible, but no one really wants to fund enormous projects other than experiments like acouple guys building a fusion reactor in their garage. (It's true just look for garage fusion reactor on google.)

[CiaphasCain]

I do believe that this is the sound of you realizing that all Avatar was about was the money. I'll have you know that I agree with your sentiments every bit - Oil is like crack, and we need to be getting off of it, not licking it off the floor.

[AuroraGlacialis]

Well - I think Avatar was not only about the money - It also was made to convey a message, that is for sure and it was rather blunt, too ;) - After JC visiting the Amazon I was hoping a bit that he would live up to the expectations of the fans, but I was surprised at that move. Now with this I am really disappointed. Not so much because I would have expected a Hollywood director to stand up against oil production, but because he first took a different route.
But it seems he is like many people focussed on a limited view of things - in his case he seems to be really fond about indigenous people in the tropics and other far away countries and on general lightweight environmentalism (buy electric cars, energy saver light bulbs and crap like that). He forgets, maybe deliberately, to adress the bigger and more close at home issues. Probably that would give him some bad publicity to ask people to actually change something in their own country instead of Brazil.


My take on Mr. Cameron's words is that it would be better for everyone that groups like OPEC didn't have a monopoly on oil especially now. It would be better, but the extraction of the oil would definately lead to scars lasting for centuries. Also, oil is too much of a "cash-cow" for anyone to want to fund research into alternative energy. I'm not talking about windmills or solar power, I'm talking about better hydrogen fuel cells and maybe even the reality of fusion and anti-matter reactors in the near future.


Sure it would be better for the economy if there was no dependency on foreign oil, so for an economist this is definitely a good move. For an environmentalist who is even half-heartedly interested in real change this is a serious blunder. Ok, I did not get the full statement, but I suspect he will go on wailing about the tailings have to be made safe and there has to be remediation efforts after the mining to grow back forests, but that is as nonsensical as telling BP to please make their drilling more safe and to clean up everything they contaminate - such things just cannot be made 100% safe. There is always a risk involved, damage to be done and a regrown forest is not going to replace a real ecosystem within the decades to come. Even fracking clearcutting is better than this - at least the deep soil is still there and not scraped off! That kind of economic light-weight environmentalism is why I come to dislike Greenpeace and other large NPOs - they just want to make some nice deals, protect a little bit here and there and an endangered species here and a eco-tourism landscape there. This is like trying to flash the lights of the 18-wheeler that is the current path of civilization to make a few deer get out of the way while the whole thing heads for the wall. And to add some flowers to the insides of the windows.

On the technofixes proposed - hydrogen and even antimatter are merely storage solutions like batteries. The problem is of course energy consumption itself. And here it does not really matter where it comes from - the consumption is increasing and increasing. Solar power works, Windmills work - both are inefficient and require high investment, some maintenance and a lot of land. Fusion is a pipe dream that even with funding is not realistic anytime soon. Who knows if it ever will be feasible to make it work in a large scale. Yes, they managed fusion already, but that was usually for fractions of a second or a bit more, required tromendous amounts of energy to start and there is little evidence it can be contained and maintained continously. Also additional technologies are not even in their start but are required. Like there simply is not enough tritium to make fusion work. So that has to be made somehow to make it work. And in any case Jevons Paradox will hit and the availability of more energy will simply increase demand. The construction of new "alternative energies" simply goes into the increasing energy consumption instead of replacing "old energies". Especially if these alternative energies ever manage to be cheap.
So consuming less energy and less resources (that in turn require energy) and less products (that in turn require resources and energy) would be a much more sane option than to hope for some salvation in new technologies. Teachnology cannot be the saviour. I tis a tool - something people can work with, but it never ever should rise to the status of a saviour. If that happens, people become dependent on and addicted to technology. They loose control, become slaves under the master of technology in the sense that they still control the individual tools but cant go on living as they do without the whole system.

Sorry for ranting a bit - the topic was oil sands and Cameron. And I just want to say that I am deeply disappointed about anyone - be it Cameron or someone else - who goes to the distant Amazon to protest a hydroelectric powerplant and then takes a helicopter over the local oil mining and talks of it as a great chance. This is messed up!

[AuroraGlacialis]

Oh and for all who are interested in what is up with Tar Sands Mining, here is the description of a movie on it with videolink to a preview: Dirtly Oil (http://bit.ly/b6mzg7)

[AuroraGlacialis]

Oh and here is another interesting statement that gets dismissed in corporate media:


"Despite the conclusions within this report, the truth is that how these tar sands are affecting local people and their traditional lands can only be described as deadly. There has been a clear lack of participation by our Elders and knowledge holders in the review of tar sands impacts, undermining an honest and holistic assessment of what is really going on in this region," asserted Alice Martin, Cree Elder. "What is terrible is that this report suggests that the Indigenous people who have the traditional knowledge, the people of the land, do not know what they are talking about when it comes to the environmental and health impacts in there community! It is evident that the ugly truth about the tar sands is not what the government wants to hear, because it will impact the economy in a negative way, but the question is how will this lack of truth impact the people who have lived for generations on this land?"http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/December2010/15/c5633.html

Remember the Cree? "Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money"

But I'm sure the oil companies will pay for some shantytown for them to live in and give them adequatly paid jobs in cleaning their refineries.

I am going to puke...